A Study Of Interactive Teaching In College English Classroom

With social development and increasing economic globalization, the communicative function of English is more and more emphasized by people. The society needs a lot of talents with higher communicative competence in English. However, the status quo of Chinese college students’English communicative competence is not satisfactory at all. The current college English teaching method is dominated by the traditional way which is teacher-centered, text-based and test-oriented. It largely restricts the development of students’comprehensive competence in using English. Therefore, how to change the classroom teaching model and develop students’English communicative competence has become an important issue that needs to be urgently resolved.The interactive teaching approach, which has arisen from1970s, is very popular in the field of foreign language learning and teaching in western countries. It suggests that the college English classroom should be students-centered and the teacher should provide the students with more opportunities to practice English. It also claims that the ultimate goal of college English teaching is to develop students’English communicative competence. In our country, the study of this teaching approach started late. Moreover, most studies are only descriptive researches and few scholars make practical researches. Therefore, starting from reviewing relevant theories and studies, this thesis attempts to conduct an empirical study on the interactive approach adopted in college English class, tries to make clear the influence of classroom interaction on students’English studies, communicative competence and language proficiency, to find out the students’ perceptions of effective classroom interaction and thus to improve the application of the interactive approach in college English teaching.The chief methodology adopted in the present research is the empirical study which lasts for a semester. And the research subjects are65freshmen majoring in marketing management at Jiujiang University. They come from two different classes. One is set as the experimental class in which the interactive teaching approach is adopted. While the other is set as the controlled class which still follows the traditional way. In this research, English tests, questionnaires and interview are also employed and the data collected from them are analyzed under the help of SPSS. According to the statistical and comparative analyses, we find that classroom interaction has a positive influence on students’English studies, communicative competence and language proficiency.By combining the students’ perceptions of effective classroom interaction and the author’s own teaching practice, some strategies for implementing effective interaction in college English classroom are proposed:(1) changing teachers’role and their beliefs about English teaching;(2) implementing group work sufficiently and effectively;(3) improving teachers’questioning strategies;(4) offering students appropriate feedback.However, due to some subjective and objective reasons, the present study has numerous limitations. Some improvements will be made in future research.